NEW DELHI - Environmental clearance procedures would be made more “transparent and businesslike” to avoid any conflict of interest and to ensure a stipulated period for the process, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said Friday.

“There has been criticism that the process (of environmental clearances) lacked transparency… lot of civil society organisations have commented that the people who headed some expert committees - that do appraisal of clearances - had conflict of interest. We have taken the first step today,” Ramesh told media persons at the Paryavaran Bhawan.

The first step was accepting the resignation of former bureaucrat P. Abraham, who was the chairman of the expert appraisal committee for river valley and hydroelectric projects - one of seven such committees in the ministry. Abraham had also been on the board of many power companies with interest in hydro-power and was charged with misusing his position.

In addition, the minister said four conditions - an annual environmental statement required under the Environment (Protection) Rules 1986, a copy of the clearance letter, the status of compliance of the stipulated environmental clearance conditions including results of monitored data, and a six-monthly report on the status of compliance - all be made public by the party undertaking the project.

Ramesh said this needed to be done to ensure a “more transparent, business-like clearance procedure within set time periods” and prescribed a period of 150 days for forest clearance and 210 days for environmental clearance.

The minister also said that the number of pending cases which were 700 when he took charge had been brought down to 250. “All cases will be put up on our website for public scrutiny by June 30,” he said.

Noting the ministry had an “unnaturally high rate of acceptance” for clearances, he said: “The rate is 98 percent - this needs to be changed to a healthy rate of rejection.” Several cases that had been rejected recently dealt with forests and mining in hilly states, he said.

Ramesh also criticised the tendency of project promoters, both in the public and private sector, to lay the foundation stones even before being granted the clearances from his ministry.

“This tendency to treat clearances as a mere formality cannot be accepted - legally I cannot do much, but I can sit on the file by administrative right,” he said.